Strangest Genetic Scientific Experiments
Nazi scientist created a twin-town
The steely hearted “Angel of Death”, Josef Mengele, whose mission was
to create a master race fit for the Third Reich, was the resident medic
at Auschwitz from May 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army
advance in January 1945. His task was to carry out experiments to
discover by what method of genetic quirk twins were produced – and then
to artificially increase the Aryan birthrate for his master, Adolf
Hitler.
Historians claim Mengele’s notorious experiments may have borne
fruit. For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one
in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins –
most of them blond haired and blue eyed. But residents of Candido Godoi
now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s,
posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the
women of the town. Shuttling between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, he
managed to evade justice before his death in 1979, but his dreams of a
Nazi master race appeared unfulfilled.
Spider-goats to produce sought materials
What do you get when you cross a spider with a goat? It sounds like
it should be the start of a joke, but the spider goat project reflects
just one of many disturbing genetic hybridisation projects. Genetic
scientists have incorporated selected spider DNA into goat embryos to
engineer a hybrid spider goat – and here’s why…. Spiders can produce an
amazing substance, highly desirable, more valuable than gold – that
substance is spilder silk.
Nexia Biotechnologies in Quebec along with scientists at the U.S.
Army’s Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM) in Natick, Mass,
have taken the specialized silk producing gene from a spider and
inserted it into a goat embryo. The result is a goat……that looks like a
goat, acts like a goat, but produces milk which contains proteins which,
when treated, produce a very close imitation of the valuable spider
silk. A single goat only produces small amounts of the desired material,
so an extremely large herd is required to acquire useful quantities.
New life from a mouse that has been frozen for 16 years
Scientists have created clones of a mouse that had been dead and
frozen for 16 years. It is the first time they have been able to clone a
frozen animal.
The Japanese researchers say their work will benefit mankind - and
could be used to bring back extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth
or sabre tooth tiger. Critics say it brings the world closer to the day
when people try to clone long- dead relatives stored in cryopreservation
clinics. It could even lead to a macabre new industry - in which people
leave behind ‘relics’ of their bodies in freezers in the hope that they
could one day be cloned.
The latest experiment comes more than 11 years after British
scientists stunned the world with Dolly the cloned sheep. Although
scientists have since cloned a host of different animals, using genetic
material from single cells, they have always used living cells.
Modified mosquito to fight other mosquitos
A genetically modified (GM) strain of malaria-resistant mosquito has
been created that is better able to survive than disease-carrying
insects.
It gives new impetus to one strategy for controlling the disease:
introduce a transgenic mosquito carrying a gene that confers resistance
to the malaria parasite into wild populations in the hope that they will
take over. These mosquitoes had another gene inserted into them to make
their eyes fluoresce, to distinguish them from the ordinary strain.
The insect carries a gene that prevents infection by the malaria
parasite. The researchers caution that their studies are still at an
early stage, and that it could be 10 years or more before engineered
insects are released into the environment. The approach exploits the
fact that the health of infected mosquitoes is itself compromised by the
parasite they spread. Insects that cannot be invaded by the parasite are
therefore likely to be fitter and out-compete their disease-carrying
counterparts.
Genetically engineered cows to produce fortified milk
A Dutch biotechnology company called Pharming has genetically
engineered cows, outfitting females with a human gene that causes them
to express high levels of the protein human lactoferrin in their milk.
According to Pharming’s website, the protein —which is naturally present
in human tears, lung secretions, milk and other bodily fluids—fights
against the bacteria that cause eye and lung infections, plays a key
role in the immune system of infants and adults and improves intestinal
microbial balance, promoting the health of the gastro-intestinal tract.
“Since the protein has the ability to bind iron, is a natural
anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral, is an antioxidant and also
has immunomodulatory properties, large groups of people might benefit
from orally administered lactoferrin,” the company literature reads.
Scientists have tested the toxicity of the protein—isolated from the
cows’ milk—on rats. They found that—even at the high level of 2,000 mg
recombinant human lactoferrin per kg body weight—orally consumed human
lactoferrin has no adverse effects to complement all the supposed
benefits already mentioned.
Girls genetically predisposed to pink
We all know that women like pink and men prefer blue, but we have
never really known why. Now it emerges that parents who dress their boys
in blue and girls in pink may not just be following tradition but some
deep-seated evolutionary instinct. Researchers have found that there
could be sound historical reasons why women have developed a heightened
appreciation of reds and pinks, while men are drawn to blue.
The scientists from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who were
led by Dr Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling, averaged people’s overall
preferences. The male favourite was a pale blue while the female
favourite was a lilac shade of pink.
The participants in the study were Chinese and British. The Chinese
students showed a marked preference for red. As red symbolises luck and
happiness in China, this indicates that cultural norms are also
involved. In the study, which is published in the journal Current
Biology, the scientists showed pairs of colours to 208 volunteers aged
between 20 and 26, who had to select which they preferred by clicking
with a computer mouse. Both groups showed similar sex-related
preferences, with women liking blues and pinks while men liked mainly
blues.
There is already evidence that human’s ability to see in colour is
likely to have evolved because of the usefulness of being able to
distinguish red fruits from green backgrounds. The female role as
gatherers while males hunted could have favoured a particular preference
for reds and pinks, the scientists said. Dr Ling said the team was now
seeking to investigate further the extent to which these preferences are
innate. Her own favourite colour? “A very palish pink,” she said. |